Note: Bubble size represents the total population in each country. Data are from the International Debt Statistics (IDS), World Development Indicators (WDI), and the INFORM Risk Index databases. Chart adapted from analysis featured in IDR 2025.
Food and nutrition insecurity is only one dimension of the countries’ challenge. Many countries also face deeper structural weakness that influence their resilient to shocks and crises, and shape their long-term development trajectories.
To capture this broader picture, we use the INFORM Vulnerability Index, which reflects the structural fragilities that make development progress harder to sustain. The index brings together factors such as poverty and inequality, demographic pressures, food system weakness, health burdens, and institutional limitations — long-standing conditions that influence how significantly shocks and stresses affect people and slow development progress.
A consistent pattern emerges. Countries with heavy external debt burdens often show higher overall vulnerability. Many of the same countries where debt levels are high and nutritious foods and healthy diets are least affordable are also more vulnerable to crises — whether they stem from global food price spikes, climate events, public health emergencies, or economic downturns. These overlapping pressures make it harder for governments to respond and harder for people to recover.
Why this matters
These three indicators — heavy debt burdens, unaffordable healthy and even sufficient basic energy diets, and high national vulnerability — point to a clear and concerning pattern: countries carrying the largest external debt burdens often face the greatest obstacles to securing food and nutrition and to building resilience to shocks and crises.
These indicators also highlight settings where debt pressures may interact with existing structural fragilities in ways that complicate development progress. Seeing these pressures together underscores the importance of assessing debt within a broader development lens. When debt levels are viewed alongside social, institutional, and human conditions, it becomes easier to identify where vulnerabilities are accumulating and where support is most needed.
